October 7, 2004

• Whore.

  
  

  I have become an ebay whore. We are tight for cash (when aren’t we?) due to my hub’s inability to realise that:

  
  

  
  
  • a)he’s supporting a wife and two kids on whatever he earns;
  
  
  • b)he sometimes has to do jobs that pay better that he doesn’t like (oh boo-hoo) because of a) above
  
  
  • c) his tendency to raid the bank account for high priced lattes and sarnies for lunch ($12 for a coffee and a tuna sandwich, are you kidding me? That’s two outings for the kids!!)  and
  
  
  • d) taking clients out for lunch and then ‘forgetting’ to tell me or budget for it.

  
  

  So then we (meaning me and the kids who are budgetting to within an inch of our lives) have no cash to do anything. And then the enforced boredom turns my children feral and me into a slathering mess. There’s only so many fun crafts to do with egg cartons and pipe cleaners, ya know. Especially if you are a mum like me, who’s only doing this shit because the kids like it. When they stop liking it, it’s time to hit the pay-as-you go entertainment.
  

  
  

  Argh.

  
  

  So last week, I’d had enough. It had rained all week, the kids were a nanosecond from being locked in the closet with rats and spiders like Carrie.

  
  

  I raided every closet and every box in the garage for things to flog. And wow… what people will pay for stuff I don’t want anymore. Okay, there’s been a few tears, especially over little eeny weeny baby clothes but tears won’t put dinner on the table. Or fund Mrs. Paxil.

  
  

  And so here I sit, obsessively refreshing my browser over and over again, to see how much moolah I am making. Getting pissed at people who won’t even bid on my lovely stuff. Don’t they recognise a bargain? Don’t they realise I wept real tears over those little pink overalls? Whassamatter with them?

  
  

  However, I found the best solution is to write the descriptions after a snootful and half of cheap Aussie plonk. (After last week, I drink my wine from a beer stein, believe me). You’d be surprised at what sheer bluntness does to whet a buyer’s appetite. Telling them that if they don’t like it, they can email me and bitch – works wonders.

  
  

  But there is a  bad side to all this whoredom.

  
  

   I am a packrat and a sentimentalist (who me?) and keep everything my children have ever worn, and written, or drawn or played with. I keep old love letters, watches that don’t work because I had a romance with the boy that gave them to me, postcards from old lovers, manky old thread bracelets from Simon the would be poet,  rock tshirts from concerts that I don’t remember because I was so blitzed I had to buy the t-shirt to convince myself I went… you get the picture. And then I trip over something one too many times, or can’t find a particular item because it’s lost in the midden of memorabilia and then I get ugly.

  
  

  I mean, why the hell am I keeping a silver pair of celtic cross earrings when I think they are naff? Just because I bought them in Ireland? Or a pair of tiny baby shoes were worn once at a christening? I hate them, I only bought them because it was church.

  
  

  Everything becomes a candidate for removal. I am ruthless – winnowing out things with nary a glance. Posting ebay listings like a fiend.

  
  

  Ka-ching, ka-ching.

  
  

  And then I find myself browsing items and thinking ‘wow, that’s so lovely’ and realising it’s MINE. And praying frantically that the said morons who don’t bid, won’t bid and I can wrap it back up in tissue paper and not look at it again for another couple of years.

  
  

  I am an idiot. A soon to be cashed up ebay whore, but an idiot nonetheless.

  
  

  Ps. own a piece of me. go on, go bid on some of my crap. Tear my heart from out of my chest. Better still, don’t.

  • 1:17 am
  • 10 Comments